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 Mass support for Shah Rukh after Sena attack:
From the film fraternity, his fans to artists and political parties
- Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is drawing mass support in the
wake of ....Read
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In
the Shah Rukh Khan-Shiv Sena standoff the heroism is not as heroic
and villainy not as villainous as some in the media are projecting.
Khan “standing up” to the Sena is as
much a broadcast media driven narrative as Bal Thackeray’s “threats
and intimidation.” At its core it is nothing more than a fading
84-year-old rabble rouser’s personal need for attention and losing
battle to burnish a very thin legacy. It must not be a happy thought
for Thackeray that 44 years after he founded it the Shiv Sena’s
single-point strategy has not evolved beyond street-level goon
politics to mine some nuisance value.
Bashing up a few bystanders, tearing
down a few posters, ransacking a few offices and pushing around
defenceless citizenry to extract donations have pretty much been the
extent of the Sena’s political vision for as long as it can be
traced. In many ways the Shiv Sena is nothing more than Thackeray’s
own unsubstantiated grand view of the self which became an
anachronism not too long after it was formed.
Like all family owned and run
quasi-political outfits around the world, the Shiv Sena too is swift
at plucking low-hanging fruits and beat them into some quick
political pulp. With his own nephew Raj having ditched him and son
Uddhav not politically adding up to a whole lot, the patriarch did
not have much option but to pull out an old trick or two.
There was no way the Sena could have
passed up on Khan’s somewhat Boy Scout worldview, especially the way
it was expressed in the context of the Thackeray’s favorite target -
Pakistan. The Sena’s 486 processor could not have executed a more
complex task than ‘Shah Rukh Khan who is a Muslim star who is
releasing a movie ‘My Name is Khan’ and loves Pakistani cricketers;
so get him.’
While some sections of the breathless
broadcast media are applauding Khan’s “extraordinary courage” in
taking on Thackeray, a more sober appraisal would reveal nothing of
the kind. The 44-year-old Khan has merely stood his ground in
defence of his very reasonable and amiable take on the controversy
over the failure of T20 cricket team owners to bid for a single
Pakistani player. It is a sign of the times that something as
routine as expressing one’s beliefs and sticking to them is being
spun as an act of courage under fire. It is true that the Thackerays
and the Sena did hold out some fairly equivocal threats in case Khan
did not retract his stand on the Pakistani cricketers. However,
veteran Sena watchers would see nothing more than posturing in this
move.
At the personal level Thackeray had
long been known to get a kick out of movie stars dropping by at his
residence ‘Matoshri’ in the neighborhood that is ironically called
‘Kala Nagar.’ In some ways such visits fueled his sense of
grandiosity and reinforced his image for his followers. The kind of
implied intimidation that has been used in the current instance has
more often than been only a tactic to get the targeted celebrities
to come and pay their respects. Placating “Balasahab” became a
ritual that helped the Shiv Sena acquire a profile that was way out
of sync with its real influence.
Had it not been for the past acts of
violence, which were done either directly by the loosely structured
Sena cadres or by their proxies, this brand of politics would have
seemed like the kind of caricature that Bal Thackeray is so skilled
at as a cartoonist of formidable talent. It would be a mistake to
cast the latest Sena outbursts as part of some overarching political
debate about foreign policy, national security, terror and India’s
neighborhood. In the Sena’s collective mind it is far simpler than
that. It is just a characteristically short-term tactic to stay
relevant in a city that has all but turned its back on them. Also,
it can be said with some levity that the fulminations mean nothing
more than “Come and meet Balasahab.”
As for Khan, he would be the wiser
were he not to fall for the wholly unconvincing media hype of
courage under fire.
Mayank Chhaya is a
US-based journalist who reported out of Mumbai throughout the 1980s.
He can be contacted at m@literateworld.com
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